Slide Show: One of the World’s Highest Islands

For this project, “In the Orbit of El Teide,” the photographer Meike Nixdorf travelled to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, where a volcano called Pico del Teide rises up more than twelve thousand feet. Tenerife itself is one of the highest-altitude islands in the world. Nixdorf spent three weeks capturing images of the volcanic terrain at Teide National Park, sometimes hiking up steep rises with her Mamiya 7, a medium-format rangefinder camera, to get the right perspective. She described how the weather often changed so quickly that the mountain would suddenly be shrouded in clouds: “So there was a lot of waiting involved, until the mountain was in sight again, and then it was often a matter of only a few seconds to get the right shot before the mountain was covered again.” The effect is especially clear, she said, in “El Teide, view No. 3.” Nixdorf’s photographs also offer a rare glimpse of the diverse plants that live in the national park, such as the Canary Island pine and several species of succulent plants; juxtaposed against the tough texture of the earth, these plants add soft washes of color to the otherwise desolate landscapes. Many of the plants only grow within the park, adding to the photographs’ otherworldly aspect.

Photographs by Meike Nixdorf.

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